Biography

Trained as a classical singer, Alida van der Walt (mezzo) holds BMus and BMusHons degrees in vocal performance from the Stellenbosch University. She recently completed a Master’s degree in Musicology at Rhodes University, investigating expectations of female respectability in classical vocal performance in South Africa. This project, which contained an artistic research component, firmly positioned Alida in the liminal space between practical musicianship and academia. Simultaneously musician and academic, her musical and academic projects are mutually constitutive and inform each other in an ongoing loop. Alida is currently a first-year PhD student, supported by the National Research Foundation through the SARChI Chair in Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma.

Current Research Project

My PhD project investigates healing and apology in and through musical performance in the context of gender-based violence and resultant trauma in South Africa. A necessarily interdisciplinary project, this study is situated at the intersection of trauma studies, studies of music and violence, and performance studies. Reading across these fields, my study seeks to contribute by accounting for the musical performance of trauma by considering its corollaries of healing and atonement. Indeed, I aim to reframe questions of music’s ‘miracle’ healing by theorising through the analysis of musical performance—and, additionally, through my own musical performances—an ethics of apology and reparation. My thinking is guided by the following two questions: What is the work of music performance in healing within the context of sexual and gender-based violence in South Africa? What potential does music have to perform the effects of—and to participate in—cultural trauma and recovery?

Supervisor: Dr Samantha van Schalkwyk, Dr Carina Venter (Music Department) and Minette du Toit-Pearce (Music Department)

Email: 18643442@sun.ac.za